Are Standard Infection Control Precautions Enough?

Nancy Andrews, RDH, BS

Know
the best practices to prevent the spread of disease in his/her office

Learn
the different methods for preventing contact, airborne, and droplet-spread
infections

A clinician must ask him or herself when additional
infection control measures are necessary in treatment. Standard precautions are
designed to protect patients and healthcare workers from not only blood-borne
pathogens, but those spread by blood or all bodily fluids, excretions, or
secretions--regardless of whether they contain blood, nonintact skin, or mucous
membranes. Under ordinary circumstances, standard precautions have shown to
keep patients and workers safe, but these precautions do not provide sufficient
protection against infection. In these cases, transmission-based precautions
must be taken.These include contact
precautions, droplet precautions, and airborne precautions.